A foot injury was easily one of the most irritating things he had to go through. Not the worst, of course, but he would be lying if he said he hadn't thought of making kissy faces with the business end of a shotgun once or twice. The problem wasn't the injury as much as what it stopped him from doing; he couldn't move much, not until the injury healed enough for him to do so without worsening his condition. So he could cook, as he usually does, but he couldn't do pretty much anything else. Cleaning was impossible. Mei had caught him trying to mop the floor and had carried him back to the couch with the threat of hitting him over the head with a wrench if he didn't rest. He had tried again just to see if she would actually go through with it; she hadn't. It had been worth it just to see her turning red again when she carried him back to the couch with a threat of flaying his soul if he tried to move again. He gave her bonus points for the originality.
In truth, Takuma was bored, so painfully bored he had started counting sheep to pass the time. His boredom came from his need to always be doing something. He never had the opportunity to stop completely without having anything else to do, even something as small as taking care of his living space.
It had now been a month since he'd met Mei; it was a hard thing to comprehend for him. She had smashed through his walls and expectations with the grace of All Might crashing into a building. A single month had felt like an eternity, and he had to actively remind himself he had been surviving on coffee and spite for the last fifteen years or so. He didn't exactly know how old he was, but he estimated he was around Mei's age, give or take a year.
His friend was at school safe and sound; Ms. Saneyama was still recuperating from her ordeal. It was a win in his book.
What wasn't a win, however, was how bored he was right now. So he did the worst thing he could do in this situation; he grabbed Mei's tablet and went on the internet to see the news.
The first bits of info he looked for were the incidents that led to his meeting with Mei, like picking at a scab he needed to see how bad the results were. And what he learned was... definitely something.
He was a meme, and a terrible one at that. Most of them, he didn't understand what they were referring to; he never had any internet culture, and that did not help him comprehend the word vomit and abstract images he was subjected to.
The only one that made sense to him was an image that depicted a likeness of his face, where above and below the image were texts that read:
'The Symbol of Misogyny wants YOU to go back in the kitchen.'
Takuma wondered if sending a pants-pissing amount of fear to the author would be considered an act of villainy. He hated every second of his search around the attack, and he couldn't wait to never think about it again; being the face of every misogynist out there was far from what he had in mind for himself.
The only news he was glad to learn was the lack of word from H.S.P.C about his vigilante status; he wasn't branded as one so the likelihood of being arrested by the cops or a Hero was low, but never zero; he would have to stay safe and keep his head down with both sides of the law. Easier now that he had a safe place to exist without the need to fight off druggies or worse.
Another thing had started gnawing at his thoughts. It had been many years since he'd woken up in this world, and he was closing in on the day when the show would truly start, with the start of a new year with class 1-A. That would happen in five months. What was interesting him was to see if his presence in the world had changed the outcome of All Might's successor. And he could learn that with a simple search.
'Mustafu slime incident.'
It was a testament to how fucked in the head society was that the video of a teenager getting choked out by slime could be found in less than three taps on the tablet. The longest he could find was about two minutes, recorded by a bystander.
The video played like in his memory. A blonde kid desperately cranking out explosions in an attempt to escape, or knowing him from the information seared into his brain, trying to fight the sludge monster. Heroes all around being either too preoccupied fighting fire or securing civilians; some were standing around like the rejects they were, and he could hear Death Arm telling the other tourists to wait for someone with a better Quirk to deal with the situation. In all, it was the shitshow he expected coming from Heroes doing the job for a paycheck and nothing else.
About halfway through, some kid with the same uniform burst onto the scene; he couldn't see much due to how bad the quality of the video was, but he knew there was only a single person stupid enough to rush in like that. So Midoriya had been there, and soon after All Might himself showed up.
Takuma was relieved. Sure, he had long ago decided he wouldn't go anywhere near U.A and by extension All For One, but from what he had seen, Izuku was more or less the ideal candidate for One For All. Good heart, good head, and a sacrificial streak someone would hopefully beat out of him before he got killed. He was certainly an improvement to what else was out there. Imagining some little shit like Bakugou or even Mineta with that type of power was a nightmare fuel he didn't even want to think about.
And if staying away from Mustafu all this year had allowed fate to run its course and still land on the same number, then he was okay with it. He always had that nagging fear just existing would make everything worse, and learning One For All was in good hands took a weight off his back.
Hopefully, the next Symbol Of Peace would do a better job than the last one.
Seeing those two, even through a screen, was a wild experience. All Might was everywhere, posters, plushies, and even condoms. How the number one Hero had ended up signing a deal like that he didn't know, and frankly, he didn't want to.
But Deku and Kacchan weren't well-known international figures. They were the main actors of a play inside his head, and being reminded that those two were actual living and breathing human beings was taking time to process.
It felt worse than when he first laid eyes on Mei. True, he had seen her a long time ago through one of his prophetic seizures, but it wasn't like he had her entire childhood dropped into his head like with those two. He would have prayed for the soul of whoever was going to have to deal with both kids if he thought someone would have listened, because as far as he was concerned, there was nothing in this world that could make him go anywhere near those two walking time bombs. Nope, not even in a million years. He was fine where he was, far away from them.
He had gone through enough adventure just hanging onto life; he didn't even want to think about the amount of horror they would have to go through in the future. Maybe All Might would finish the job, maybe the old monster would finally get his hands on One For All; whatever the result ended up being, he could only hope he wouldn't end up as collateral damage in their war.
The U.S.J. was the source of many of his nightmares in the past. Nomu, that single word sent shivers of fear down his spine, a bio-weapon to kill All Might. Seeing it in all its gruesome glory was not for the faint of heart. Takuma had spent many long nights thinking about how he could kill something like that.
Super-Regeneration, Shock Absorption, Hysteric Strength, and another one he didn't know.
Four Quirks in one monster.
Super-Regeneration was pretty simple; regenerators tended to despise fire since carbonized cells couldn't regenerate. Takuma wondered if Mei's boots could do the trick. Probably, if it could melt steel, it could melt flesh.
Shock Absorption was a doozy, but acid, fire, drowning were not death caused by any kind of shock, so it was pretty easy to think around if he had time to prepare.
Hysteric Strength was barely worth mentioning; he had fought more than one brute thinking punching hard was all they needed to win a fight.
Each one could easily be countered, but together they made a potent mix that could rival the Symbol Of Peace in terms of strength.
And then there was the last one. The unknown one, that let the creature move so fast it couldn't be followed with standard eyesight.
This was what made the Nomu truly scary. Because there was no point in creating ways of dealing with it if he was going to get smashed into a red puddle in the time it took to blink. It wasn't a fight he could win.
Then of course there was Tomura who could kill with a touch, not something anyone wanted to have to deal with, even if just taking a finger of each hand was easy to do if one had practice. And also close to a hundred goons that would swarm the U.S.J. in an attempt to kill the students. None of them had died, which was a relief. The best Hero school in the country invaded and its students left to fend for themselves.
Then a thought hit him, so obvious he wanted to scream.
'Mei was going to U.A.' his heart skipped a beat as his body stilled
How did he forget?! She would be on the campus when the assault began and who knows what other type of bullshit would happen with her nearby?! He couldn't-o-O-o sto-o-O-o has to-o-O-o her-o-O-o-
"Watsha doin'?" Mei's voice in his ear made him jump from his spot on...the floor?
What was he doing? Now that was a question he would have liked the answer to. "I am ceiling-gazing."
"Ceiling-gazing?" she parroted while setting her school bag on the coffee table. "On the floor?"
"The floor has many meditative qualities; you should try it once in a while," he added, opting to bullshit his way out as a headache he hadn't seen coming started to noticeably recede.
To his lack of surprise, Mei shrugged and only said one thing. "Sure." Before joining him and laying on the ground next to him shoulder to shoulder. "Oh ceiling, share thy wisdom," she added dramatically with both arms raised in a plea.
He failed to stop himself in time and let out a snort. "You're impossible."
She giggled and let her arms fall. "You like impossible."
"I do," Takuma answered, and he didn't fail to notice the same emotion he couldn't quite place scratching at his thoughts. "Life wouldn't be quite the same without you."
He turned his head to look her in the eyes and was surprised when he saw her look away quickly. That was strange, and he didn't quite know what to make of that reaction. Did he just walk on some invisible social taboo he didn't know about?
He realized he indeed had when a wave of melancholy hit his mental wall. "Thanks," she said in a whisper he barely heard.
"What for?"
"Putting up with me?" she offered, seemingly not too sure of what she was referring to herself. "Or maybe I'm just being dumb."
"I don't see how the best wizard I know could be dumb," he retorted on a lighter tone.
"I'm not a wizard."
"Then explain to me how you made a pair of boots into a portable flamethrower."
"Gasoline and compressed air with a kinetic sensor," she listed with a shrug.
He hummed loudly. "Sounds like magic to me."
Her mood took a lighter turn, extricating herself from the sudden negative emotion that had taken her. Takuma high-fived himself and breathed deeply before shaking his shoulder to work out the strain his stay on the floor had built. Not that he remembered how or why he had decided to lay there.
Mei decided to do the same, angling herself so as to lay her head against his arm. "How was your day?"
"Terrible," he groaned. "I miss my bucket."
"I don't understand how you can keep cleaning all day and still look forward to it," she told him with a small amount of horror he found hilarious. "It's boring."
"It is," he agreed easily. "But it's the good kind of boring; it helps me focus and not feel like a complete parasite."
She bopped him on the head lightly with the back of her hand. "You're not a parasite; I enjoy not having to cook and the help when testing babies."
"And in exchange I get a warm couch, food, and a roof over my head. I think this deal is pretty skewed in my favor."
"Nah."
"Nah?" he parroted dumbly.
"Nah, I like the company; I will now deny you feeling and replace them with my own," she stated with the most bored tone of voice he heard her muster. "I like you being here. Being alone sucks."
'It does,' he agreed wholeheartedly.
"I can understand the feeling; I rarely get the chance to be around the same person for such a long time," he confessed with a small grin. "And I can say without a doubt that I never met someone less boring than you."
He was hit with a wave of happiness and an unhealthy amount of anxiety. "Really?"
"Yes, why would I lie?" he asked, confused as to why she asked him to clarify.
"In the past, I was always told I was too much for...most people," she recalled with a small voice devoid of the excitement and life he was used to hearing coming from her.
"Good rule of thumb, if someone doesn't appreciate you for who you are, they are neither worth your energy nor your time," he said, recalling the few bits of wisdom he had gathered all these years. "Don't waste your time on people that don't deserve you; you'll end up drained and with nothing to show for it."
"I would have thought an Empathy Quirk would have made making friends easier," she wondered with a great dose of interest in her voice.
"It is; I can feel what makes someone tick, see how they react to a subject, and mold my words and opinions around theirs to validate their feelings, and with enough time, I can make them so dependent on my words and the validation I provide they turn into nothing more than tools that want to please me," he declared before turning his head toward hers and meeting her wide stare. "But that's not friendship; that's manipulation. Toxic behavior that happens naturally if I use my Quirk on someone for a prolonged period of time. I wasn't kidding when I told you most people don't want someone with an Empathy Quirk around them."
After his confession, he waited; there wasn't much else to do. He stared at the ceiling without thinking of anything, just staring dead ahead for Mei to pass her sentence on what she'd learned.
"And you can't turn your Quirk off," she stated rhetorically.
"I've learned to lessen its impact, but it's not an exact science; some things still go through," he felt the need to specify. "I've been searching for the off button all my life."
"So you're like All Might."
If there was one sentence he never expected to hear, it was this one; not once in his life had he been compared to a Hero, and certainly not the Symbol Of Peace himself. "W-W-What?" he stuttered uncharacteristically.
"All Might is so strong he could raze an entire district with one punch. But he doesn't do it. You could turn all the people in range of your Quirk into nice little tools to make your life easier, yet you were homeless and barely scraping by when we met," she explained, her head tilted slightly toward him, something she did when she was deep in thought. "A Villain would be living an easy life with servants at their beck and call. So you're like All Might; you have tremendous amount of power, but you're using it for good. Like going against a multi-armed Villain to save a child or learning to control your power to keep people safe, even from yourself. You're a Hero."
Any word he could have said died in his mouth, Takuma's breath itched, and he quickly draped an arm over his eyes to make sure none of the gathering tears spilled out. "You can't just say that."
"Breaking the rules is kinda my thing," she said with no small amount of pride.
A wet chuckle escaped him. "I can see that."
While he was dealing with his feelings, Mei moved closer, moving her head from his arm to his shoulder, turning on her side and hugging his arm. It was nice, like a hug but more subdued, still warm, comfortable even, and somewhat less overwhelming. Yeah, he liked that. He returned the half-hug by pulling her arm just enough toward his side to let her feel him returning whatever this was.
"Still, did you have people willing to deal with your Quirk before me?"
"A few...growing up on the street, you tend to join forces with other kids your age for protection. Safety in numbers," he recalled, the many faces of his once friends still as clear as the day he met them. "Some of us got back in the system or found people willing to deal with our issues. For everyone else, we only had each other. Being able to feel who want to harm you and your friend makes you popular pretty fast."
"Who would want to go after a bunch of kids?" Mei asked with genuine disbelief.
Takuma was reminded they were from two very different worlds because if he started to list every reason someone would be interested in getting their hands on a bunch of ankle-biters nobody would miss, it would take him an entire day. "You don't want to know."
"Do I need to make more explosives?" she offered, and he was touched to feel like it was a genuine offer.
"Don't worry, they've been dealt with a long time ago," he informed her. "A friend of mine, Danny, got too motivated and started using his Quirk a bit too aggressively. He sent a bunch of gangs against a ring of flesh traders. You can search for the Shibuya Massacre if you want to know how that went."
It took her a second to digest the information. "What's his Quirk?"
"Every lie he speaks becomes the obvious truth to anybody who hears it. A year ago, he got tangled with the C.R.C and decided he wanted to mess with them, lost contact since then. He's probably leading them by now or maybe he's dead, who knows," he chuckled fondly, remembering his friend who was admittedly crazier than him. "Man, I miss him. The only other friend I have left is Nova. I saw her recently; she was in the den where I went to get paid. I haven't seen her in at least two years."
"And you can't go see her because of the bounty," Mei groaned next to him.
"Exactly, and even if I didn't have a bounty on my head, I wouldn't go anyway. She's my best friend. Her and Danny were the only people I had for a long time, and we were there for each other every step of the way. But that wasn't enough, not for the others at least. I'm happy to know she's doing well for herself, and that's about it."
"Loving someone without being able to be near them sounds like hell," she stated with a small amount of sadness directed toward him.
"It's better this way. She joined a gang led by a misandrist, so the women are cared for, and The Madam is a big deal in the underworld. So unless some big change happens, she'll be okay until she gets out of this life," he reassured her. "If things go well, we may be able to reconnect when she gets out of the lifestyle."
She hummed a sad tune as she listened to him, and he could tell there was a burning question on her lips. "Do you remember your parents?"
"I don't," he answered simply. "I don't even know my family name, in fact."
"What name do you use then?"
"Takuma."
"But wait, isn't that your given name?"
"It is. My official name is Takuma Takuma," he told her with a small smile, moving his arm from over his eyes to see her baffled expression.
"You named yourself Takuma Takuma?"
"Yes," he grinned, enjoying the mock horror on her face.
"I am never letting you name one of my babies," she declared without missing a beat. "I don't know what's worse, that you chose to name yourself your given name or that you are proud of it."
"You can talk all you want; I've never had to tell someone to use my given name once in my life," he told her, turning his head to look her straight in the eyes. "Unlike someone, Ms. Hatsume."
Her expression turned sour, like eating a lime. "Eww, gross, stop it!" she moaned in disgust, slapping him comically lightly on the chest. "How did you even get the right to name yourself that?"
"I got an information broker to get me in contact with someone that could create me an identity. He did a good job, and it's not like I have any clue where I came from, so any official paper trail was impossible to find. I don't think anyone ever asked or even ever cared about where I came from when I was in foster care; they gave me a roof over my head and three meals a day, and that was pretty much it."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. Why don't you tell me about yours?" Takuma offered, moving his head to rest it against hers.
He was glad she didn't find the change of position too invasive; he was greatly enjoying how close she was to him. The feeling of her skin against his and the warmth of her body was filling a need he never knew he had. Being close to her was like breathing fresh air after going underwater for too long.
"Mom loved building and repairing cars; she enjoyed her work so much she created her own company. She did it to get her name out there in the industry. But as it turned out, running a company was hard and time-consuming, and she hated every second of it. So she recruited someone to do it for her. My dad," she recalled after a small amount of time. "They worked well together, my mom in the workshop while dad was working out deals for more and more projects. The company expanded, and they later made a name for themselves when they helped I-Island with one of their prototypes. They did well enough my mom was offered a license to make Heroic adjacent gear."
"Heroic adjacent?"
"Gear close to what a pro Hero might use in the field without the lethality," she explained. "Nothing that can kill, harm, or maim."
He nodded, happy to listen to the rest of what she was willing to tell him.
"After a few years of learning and making support gear, mom decided to specialize in power-suits. They made them for construction, diving equipment, and they even got a contract to make a suit to help with rescue work after a seismic event or a villain attack. They got together one night after fulfilling a big contract and partied a little too hard. And nine months later, I was born!"
He chuckled at the blunt delivery. "That must have been quite the party."
"Yeah, I wish they'd warn me about the recording. I don't have enough bleach to get that discovery out of my head," she groaned with disgust while he coughed to hide his laughter. "Mom wasn't a fan of twiddling her thumb, and she barely slowed down even during the pregnancy, and she only took a week off of work to rest before diving back in. Dad is the one who took care of me the most. Right until I started showing interest in what she was doing. After that, I was always with her, watching, learning. Tearing things apart and building them back better. I loved working with her, and Dad was always there to help me, carrying scrap and broken down power-suits so I could dismantle them and learn how they worked. I fell asleep on the factory floor and woke up in my head so many times I thought I had a teleportation Quirk until my mutation showed up."
"This is the cutest thing I've ever heard," he commented, enjoying the small blush on his friend's face.
"Dad thought so too, he took so many pictures," she said with a small voice, and Takuma swore he could hear her blush. "At some point, mom was asked to demonstrate her work at an exposition. So she took her best suit, gave us both a kiss, and left," she added. He could hear the shift in tone and change in her mind; he had an inkling as to what he was about to hear.
"That was the last time I saw her. She got caught in a Villain attack; her car got crushed and everything in it. They didn't find enough of her for us to identify the remains, but she never showed up, so we buried an empty casket," she said with a trembling voice.
"You don't have to continue," he offered as she took a moment to breathe in and out deeply.
"I want to," she whispered before clearing her throat. "Dad did his best to keep the company running, and it worked for some time. I tried to help where I could, but I wasn't my mom. Without her, it just wasn't the same. Dad sold some of the buildings; he kept my mom's old workshop from the time she was a mechanic."
The weight of where he stood hit him in the gut, the scrapyard around the house made more sense now.
"He was planning on keeping the company running until I was old enough to inherit it; he wanted to buy and expand the Hatsume's name into the automobile industry. It would keep the lights on and give enough time to be with me. It was a pretty good plan. But he got sick. The doctor gave him a year; even with the best healing Quirk in Japan, he wouldn't last, not long enough anyway."
He listened while slowly increasing the pressure he put around her to make it very clear he was still with her; it helped her ground her in the moment, think clearly when she was fighting off a pain he knew too well.
"Seeing as there was no one he could trust with the company, he sold everything and locked the fund behind enough law and paperwork no one could even dream of taking it away from me. We spent that year together, and I buried him soon after my fourteenth birthday."
She choked on her feelings, too overwhelmed to speak, trying desperately not to cry. Takuma hated seeing people cry, but he would be damned if he let his issues stop him from doing what was right.
"I didn't know them, but I've seen their work and what you can do," he stated, trying to find how to word his thoughts. She raised her eyes, brimming with unshed tears, to meet his own. "There's not a single cell in my body that doubts your parents would be proud of you."
The dam broke, and she started crying; he took a deep breath to push back his own rising anxiety at seeing her cry. "Can I hug you?"
She nodded, and Takuma didn't hesitate to turn to his side and offer her a warm embrace she was quick to take advantage of as she buried her face in his chest.
Her sobs were muffled, and her shoulders shook, yet he felt both as keenly as if he was the one crying. His entire being screamed at him to run, hide, or fight. He did nothing of the sort. He waited for her to feel better. Her arms were around his chest, and she was holding for dear life, and he would rather fight All For One with a toothpick than take this small amount of comfort away from her. He raised a hand to her hair and started petting it, like she did to him more than a few times; he guessed it was time to return the favor. He felt her calm down; she didn't stop crying, far from it, but it gave him enough breathing room not to feel like his own chest was about to explode. He was suffering through her feelings, being rocked by their intensity.
Too close, yet unwilling to move out of the way. He'd never turned his back on a friend, and he wouldn't start today. So he steeled himself and waited for her emotion to run its course and hopefully for her to feel better. Takuma knew there was a reason Mei was alone; he hadn't thought her story would be so upsetting to recount, and in retrospect, he should have; no one was alone without a good reason. He could feel her shoulder shake slightly less as time passed; the sobs she buried in his chest were harder to hear, and he could feel her beginning to fall asleep, drained from the surge of emotion. He could admit he was also looking forward to a nap himself.
When he felt she was about to fall asleep, he slowly moved to a kneeling position, still keeping her close to him while he slowly brought her into his arms and carried her much like she did with him a few days ago. "Do you want me to bring you to the couch or to your room?"
"Room," she whispered, and he could tell she was ashamed of the way she had broken down in front of him.
Walking to her room, he opened the door with one hand; he barely paid attention to his surroundings to respect her privacy and focused on laying her on her bed. "Rest; I'll make sure you have something warm when you wake up."
She nodded blearily, and he felt her fall asleep the second her head hit the pillow.
He walked away, closing the door behind him. After such a rush of emotion, Takuma knew he wouldn't sleep for a while, and he would probably need to check if none of her habits had made their way into his head. He was a good multitasker, and he had some food to make. Now, first, he would need to change the bandage on his foot; he'd completely forgotten about it, and now it was bleeding through the bandage. He couldn't even feel the pain as his Quirk completely shadowed anything else than the rush of emotion for the past few minutes. It was a bit of a pain, but he didn't mind it that much. Pain or not, he wouldn't have let her sleep on the ground. She deserved better than that.